


in the air tonight

by dieuclaw



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28296000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dieuclaw/pseuds/dieuclaw
Summary: Episode 11 [REUNION] CLOAKED IN SILENCE
Relationships: Kazuhira Miller/Venom Snake, Quiet/Venom Snake
Kudos: 4





	in the air tonight

The second time Snake comes back from Aabe Shifap, he’s alone.

It’s five in the morning. Kaz is up, barely, braced against the chopper’s downwash as Pequod flares in. Rain stings his face, his bloody knuckles, the yellowing bruises on his neck.

The weather will clear shortly.

He sees better in the dark, now. The rotor blades split the sky, black on black, too fast to put a bullet through but he can see a pockmark where someone tried.

**°**

“Where were you?” Kaz asks another time, as if he doesn’t have the coordinates on file, as if he really wants to know.

Snake yawns, cracks his neck. “Ruins.”

His Boss is translucent. Dust and flakes of sunburned skin have baked into his sneaking suit, and he’s on the edge of his bunk, picking at a stain from the prototype stealth camo. The sheets haven’t been unmade in weeks. Kaz can’t get comfortable.

“Saw a rare bird,” Snake continues. “Oriental stork. Shouldn’t be any this far east.”

“It’s extinct in Japan. I, ah–-read the report from the NGO. So you were birdwatching?”

“Mm.”

“Snake–“

“Not really.” A piece of stealth camo comes off all at once, shimmering between the thumb and forefinger of his prosthesis. Kaz reaches for it, watches as static makes it curl in his palm, makes the call that his Boss doesn’t need a lecture on the price of Jet-A.

“Snake, talk to me.”

“We are talking.”

Kaz rolls his eyes. “C’mon, Boss, bullshit. Tell me a story.”

Snake just stares at him. The sunset catches on the shrapnel in his skull and Kaz has to look away, to pull Snake towards him, into the shade. He smells like entrails and stale sweat. Kaz breathes it in anyway.

“About what?”

“Quiet,” Kaz says, as if it were obvious. Snake sighs.

“Kaz…”

“It’s been, what, less than a month? You were together all the time. You _trusted_ her.”

“As much as you can trust anyone.”

“Yeah. So–-I don’t know. What was it like, being out in the field with a naked chick?” Kaz’s grin is all teeth. Casual. Not like he cares. Like if he crosses the right lines in the right places, she won’t matter any more.

“You have the tapes,” Snake says flatly. He leaves Kaz prone on the perfect sheets, starts peeling off the sneaking suit. Pressed flowers fall to the floor next to half a human ear. Kaz swallows. One of the seals on the sneaking suit pops.

“There’s gotta be _something_ off the record. Even Ocelot got a mouthf–“

“You’re jealous, Kaz.”

Kaz scoffs, forces a laugh. “Boss, no. I want…”

Stripped out of his second skin, Snake is resplendent, all muscle and nylon sutures, a heroic nude from antiquity. Red bronze cast from the original–-

–-what Kaz wants is to get laid. “Tell me about her.”

Snake’s eye narrows. “Why don’t you tell me what you think you know?”

“She loved you,” Kaz bites at the clasp of his Rolex, slips it off. “Really had your back. Great shot, shitty tactics. Easy. Bad taste in music. Ocelot was teaching her sign language–-we’re not supposed to know that, by the way. Ex-XOF. Vietnam ve–-“

“She named her weapons,” Snake murmurs. “After butterflies.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How do y–-“

“Ocelot.”

“Ah.”

“It was something that happened at A Shau. She never talked about it.” The corner of Snake’s mouth twitches in a wry smile. “Obviously.”

**°**

Snow comes to Kabul on the first of December. In the mountains, it’s carried by sand.

“They say what happened at Lamar Khaate was a sandstorm,” Ocelot has to raise his voice over the white noise on the other end of the line. “That’s the official version of events. All those men, done in by a natural disaster. They say it's haunted.”

Kaz glances up from the radar. Snake’s blip hasn’t moved for hours.

“Boss?”

“He’s asleep,” Ocelot says, and dials down the volume on his headset. “The Red Army still believes Aabe Shifap is haunted, too.”

“He keeps going back. Why?”

Ocelot blinks placidly. “Like I said–-no patrols. Good shelter, too.”

There’s no reason for them to do this, to hole up in the signals room all night like Diamond Dogs is a two-man unit again. They have more important things to do than listen to a man breathe.

“It’s because of her,” Kaz leaves his crutch where it’s leaning against the switchboard and limps to the open window. A storm may be raging at the AO but here it’s clear, calm. Constellations reflect in the sea bright as a city skyline.

It’s a beautiful night.

“He keeps going back for her,” Kaz can feel Ocelot’s eyes on his back. “He–“

“He loves her,” Ocelot says. “What do you want me to say, Miller?”

“I–-“

“He came for you, didn’t he? On a white horse.”

The horse, Kaz is sure, was black.

**°**

“She could sing.”

Kaz turns the cassette over in his hand. He can’t find the words to say why this turns his blood to ice. Of everything that was a part of the Phantom’s carefully constructed charmed life, this is indisputably true.

“Where’s this accent from, anyway?”

“Kaz, I don’t--“

“Nowhere,” Kaz spits. “She wasn’t _real._ “

“Kaz.” The Phantom stays deliberately still. “She–“

“Maybe that’s why you hit it off.” He’s shaking, livid, blind, ready to rip out the Phantom’s other eye. “Two fucking freaks–-what kind of woman–-what kind of _man–-“_

“I understand.”

“Do you?” Kaz pitches forward, knots his fingers in cracked leather. The Phantom is nothing more than void where the sky should be. “Because I don’t. None of this–-this isn’t the way–-this isn’t what happens. You’re not–- _what kind of man_ –- _”_

**°**

“ _The language we shared–-no, that was no language at all.”_

**°**

Aabe Shifap is ugly like an open wound, wild, every sound muted by snow stained pink with dust thrown up by the helicopter shutting down across the valley. The silence is setting him on edge, and Kaz hates it.

His breath crystalizes in front of him, clouds his aviators. 

He shouldn’t be here.

It’s vanity, really. Nothing safe or sane, nothing profound to be seen at just another bombed-out ruin. There are files back at Mother Base. Photographs.

It’s just that he can’t trust his eyes, these days.

“Commander,” the Phantom is fractured, tiled, a mosaic standing upright, like it’s human, and Kaz flinches away. “Sorry. Stealth camo.”

“Ah.”

Dry grass breaks under Kaz’s boots as they walk towards the river. The Phantom follows him like a shadow. He refuses to look back, refuses to look when the Phantom tells him about the rainbows in the waterfall or the patterns on the walls.

“Happy New Year.”

Kaz turns, incredulous, and finds himself staring down a mirage, ankle-deep in freezing water.

“I don’t know what to call you,” Kaz says finally. He presses his hand to the Phantom’s chest and it comes away transparent, leaves a black mark, five fingers and all.

“You know who I am."

When the Phantom touches his face, mica sticks to his skin.

Kaz shudders. “Don’t–-“

The kiss is soft, chaste, and Kaz falls into the heat haze in spite of himself, bites back hard. In a heartbeat he’s pinned, soaked, gasping for air. Silver water floods his throat and he chokes. Moans. Feels nothing. Blood runs between them and the current washes it away.

“This is where it happened, huh?”

Not like he cares.

“Quiet?”

“She saw right through you,” Kaz says. “Remember that.”

**°**


End file.
